More Facebook Fun with Interest Lists – A Step by Step Guide

by Angelique on October 22, 2012

Facebook thinks it knows what’s best for you. According to Facebook, you didn’t really know what you were doing when you clicked the “like” button and followed a business, school, band, charity or TV show. Sure, you think you want to see updates from that page, but Facebook wants to show you other things. Things that are more popular with your friends. Things that generate more money for Facebook. “These are the important updates,” says Facebook, “trust us!”

The result? You may be seeing as few as a quarter of the updates from an “unpopular” page. Never mind that you deliberately “liked” that page because you were interested in that business, school, band, charity or TV show.

This is upsetting to anyone who puts a lot of time and effort into a Facebook page. I know I’m frustrated, and not just because my fans aren’t seeing my posts. I’m a fan, too, and I’m missing updates I know I’d want to read.

Facebook also plays the same game with your friends’ personal updates. Have a friend who’s new to Facebook? Facebook assumes no one is really interested in what she has to say.

Fortunately, there are some things you can do about it this:

1. You can learn how to add friends and pages to Interest Lists, which you can check whenever you like, and will always contain the updates you wish to see.

2. If you own a Facebook page, you can share this post with your followers, so they’ll know how to add you to an Interest List.

NOTE: There are actually several different methods to ensure you see your friends’ personal updates. I’m specifically talking about Interest Lists today because they are vital for business and fan pages.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Facebook Interest ListsClick on any graphic to see another version in a new window.

Step One: Find “Add to Interest Lists.” When you’re looking at a Facebook page — I’m using my page here as an example — there’s a little blue box with a little gear on the right-hand side of the page’s banner (that really large photo at the top of the page.) Click it, and your first choice will be “Add to Interest Lists.”

Step Two: Choose or create a list. There’s a default list called “Pages.” You can also create your own list.

Step Three: If you choose to create a list, this is what you’ll see. You can add any of your friends, your subscriptions, or the pages you “like” to your list.

Step Four: This is what it looks like when you add business and fan pages to your list. You see thumbnail images of all the pages that you “like.” Click on any page to highlight it. Then click “next.”

Step Five: Now you can name your list and decide if it’s public, private, or somewhere in between.”

Step Six: This is what an Interest List looks like. This is one of mine; it’s called “Top Pages.” (That was Facebook’s suggestion; I just ran with it.) You can see posts from two of the pages on my list: Phoenix Theatre and Our Beautiful World and Universe. (If my screenshot were larger you would see more posts from more pages.)

Step Seven: You can decide if you want to be notified when people interact with the pages (or people) on your list. No, I don’t know why you would want these notifications!

Step Eight: Now THESE are settings you want to use! Decide what kind of updates will show on your list! If your list includes personal friends, you may want to block posts about games like Mafia Wars. You may want to make a list that only shows photos, or that doesn’t have video.

Step Nine: Here’s where to find your Interest Lists once you’ve created them!

I can’t emphasize this enough: If you care about a Facebook page of any kind: a business, a public figure, a charity, your kids’ school, your neighborhood watch — whatever! — you’ll put it in an Interest List!

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